Category: Text

Summary Synopsis

Marco Fogg was born in Boston. He lost his parents in his childhood. So his uncle Victor brought him up. He managed to graduate Columbia University in a very poor and harsh condition, to keep a promise to uncle Victor. Then he had stayed the Central Park as a homeless for a month, he was founded and helped by Kitty Wu and Zimmer, and he recovered.

Then he found an odd job at the student department office of Columbia. The job was to go with a strange blind old man, Thomas Effing a friend or a speaker, and to hear his life full of ups and downs and to write his autobiography. The autobiography had finished, Effing passed away on purpose.

Marco sent a copy of the autobiography to Effing’s estranged son Solomon Barber, then he visited to New York to see Marco…

Book Review

Paul Auster’s 5th long novel published in 1989. And the first full-scale long novel by Auster. A story of young man, and it describes and traces his adolescence and its hard life by his first person viewpoint. And it includes many sub-episodes of sub-characters, then they connects finally. I think parts of this story might be based on Auster’s real experiences.

The first grand narrative by Paul Auster. There are many characters, scenes and episodes and various elements. The New York Trilogy and In the Country of Last Things are preparation for full-scale writings. This novel is one of consequence of Auster’s former works from The Invention of Solitude to In the Country of Last Things. In this novel, profound self-searching or think of identity and good storytelling are wonderfully combined.

In the begging, this novel is only a story of a miserable and lonely young man and his self-searching. But many episodes connects and this story develops a grand family history of three ages. Then Macro solved his riddle and found family roots.

Effing’s talks in chapter 4 and 5, are long, dull and hard to read like the cave Effing stayed. Effing’s job and talks are a kind of spiritual trial for Marco. Thorough this trial, Marco’s mind grew up, he spent a happy time for a while and he found the key to solve the riddle of his family like to see a light from a dark cave.

For twenty-years, I had live with an unanswerable question, and little by little I had come to embrace that enigma as the central fact about myself. My origins were a mystery, and I would never know where I had come from. This was what defined me, and by now I was used to my own darkness, clinging to it as a source of knowledge and self-respect, trusting in it as an ontological necessity. (p. 286)

This description is the most important one of this novel, I think. This is the meaning, the message or the thought of this novel. Loneliness, hardship and to have nothing were Marco’s identity, pride and restraint for Marco. Marco had been lived by this negative identity or motivation. Also his riddle of roots were solved, so he unexpectedly lost even this negative identity and motivation, and he must live from zero. At the same time, he lost all his family, blood relations and friends.

The Moon is the most appeared symbol in this novel. For example, Moon Palace, egg, uncle Victor’s bands Moonlight Moods and Moon Men, 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing and Ralph Albert Blakelock’s Moonlight. I think it is the metaphor signifies light in the darkness, or hope in tragedy. In the end, Marco must live from zero but his mind was relived and he found the hope of life, his adolescence ended and his new life started to begin.

Details of the Book

Moon Palace
Paul Auster
Faber & Faber, London, 5 Feb 2004
320 pages, £8.99
ISBN: 9780571142200

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Note | Moon Palace

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